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THE LAND TROUBLES 



IN IRELAND 



A Historical, Political and 
Economical Study. 



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OF SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY. 



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SYRACUSE, N. Y.: 
JOHN T. ROBERTS. 

1881. 



The Land Troubles in Ireland. 



^ARTICLE I. 

GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES OF IRELAND. 

As is well known, Ireland is the most westerly body of land in 
Europe. It lies between North Latitude 51 26' and 55 ° 21', 
being at the same distance north of the Equator as Labrador in 
the Western and Kamtschatka in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is 
the first land to catch the warm current and the moist, westerly 
breezes of the Gulf Stream. By this island as a breakwater, the 
mild current of this stream is divided into two parts, one of 
which moves southwards, enters the British Channel, and laves 
the shores of France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark and 
Norway, mollifying the climate of north-western Europe ; the 
other portion passes by Scotland and on into the Arctic Ocean. 

The constant current of warm air from over the Gulf Stream 
gives to Ireland a uniformity of temperature that is not to be 
found elsewhere in Europe, nor scarcely, in so large body of 
land, in the whole world. The general temperature in the 
vicinity of Dublin is about 50 Fahrenheit. The average tem- 
perature of the hottest and the coldest months rarely varies more 
than ten degrees from this standard. In winter the average- 
temperature is 40 ; in spring and autumn it is 50 ; and in 
summer it is 6o c . Of these limits, the lowest is not sufficiently 
cold to check the growth of herbage, nor the highest sufficiently 
intense to parch the surface of a moist soil or to scorch its 
luxuriant grasses. Hence the fields and lawns maintain a per- 
petual verdure at all seasons of the year. Lands can be sowed 
to grass at any time, even in December. The grazier never loses 
the benefit of his rich pastures, except during the passage of a 

*The matter contained in these pages was incorporated in a series of newspaper articles that 
were printed in the Northern Christian Advocate during January, February and March, 
i88i. The author has carefully revised and considerably amplified the original text for this 
reprint. The publisher thought fit to retain the term " Article " to designate the divisions of 
the subject. 



4 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

fleeting fall of snow. Cattle thus attain to a perfection which 
they seldom acquire in other lands, and this with comparatively 
little care and expense. With this remarkable uniformity of mild 
climate the inhabitants of the Emerald Isle, which is clad in 
perpetual greeness, require much less fuel than those of colder 
and bleaker climates. Less variety of clothing also is needed for 
the different seasons of the year. 

The breezes from the Atlantic, coming over the warm Gulf 
Stream, are surcharged with moisture, and thus give Ireland 
perhaps the dampest climate of any large body of land in the 
world. The worst feature of this is that there is constant moist- 
ure without rain. It is said that a piece of wet leather, if left in 
a room in summer, where there is not fire or sun, will not dry in 
a month. The weather is cloudy to a degree unknown in most 
lands. There are also frequent showers. But the average fall of 
rain is about thirty inches a year, which does not differ much 
from that of Central New York. Thunder storms, heavy rains 
and prolonged frosts are of rare occurrence. 

The prevalent soil is a fertile loam, resting on a rocky sub- 
stratum, chiefly of limestone. The luxuriance of the 'pastures 
and the heavy crops of oats raised even with the most wretched 
cultivation attest the extraordinary fertility of the soil and geniality 
of the climate. The depth, though in general not great, is in 
some parts such as to admit of fresh vegetable mould being re- 
peatedly thrown up by deeper ploughing, not unlike some soils in 
our great western prairies. Even where the soil is thin, it yields 
richly, owing to the constant moisture of the climate. In an 
extraordinarily dry season the crops on this thin soil fail. The 
greatest and almost the only danger to the crops, however, is the 
liability of the climate to long continued, excessive moisture, 
owing to which the crops may not ripen, or cannot be harvested 
when ripe. 

The general surface of the country is plain. Yet low hills are 
interspersed throughout the island. These rise at times almost 
to mountain ranges, but not of such hight as to precipitate 
great quantities of the moisture which is held in suspension by 
the breeze from the Atlantic. 



GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES OF IRELAND. 

Ireland contains thirty-two thousand square miles. This is a 
little more than the State of Maine, or about two-thirds the State 
of New York, or four-fifths the State of Ohio. About two-thirds 
of the entire surface is reported as arable land. One-seventh of 
the surface is bog land. 

The mineral wealth of Ireland is not unimportant. Several 
valuable coal fields exist ; yet these do not produce enough to 
supply even the limited manufactures of the island, over a 
million tons a year being imported from England. Ireland is 
reported to contain much lead, copper and iron, but notwith- 
standing many attempts to work the metallic mines few have been 
found to repay the outlay. Still some of the copper mines have 
been found quite remunerative. Silver, tin and gold are also 
found, but not in very workable quantity. Other minerals, use- 
ful in manufactures and arts, and found in various parts of the 
island in remunerative quantities, are manganese, antimony, 
nickel, alum, porcelain, and brick clays, building-stone, marble, 
flag-stones and roofing slates. Valuable mineral springs abound 
in many parts of the island. The mineral wealth is, on the 
whole, very greatly inferior, however, to that of England. 

The coast of Ireland is deeply indented with bays. If the 
possession of fine harbors would make a country great as a 
commercial and maritime power, she would be second to no 
country in Europe. The western shore is specially rich in har- 
bors, though but one first-class natural harbor exists on the 
eastern shore towards England. 

The coasts of Ireland abound with fish. The innumerable 
bays and mouths of rivers and creeks are the resort of vast 
shoals of herring, cod, ling, hake, mackerel and other varieties 
of fish. 

The population of Ireland at the time of the Roman invasion 
of England appears to have been very small. Tacitus quotes 
Agricola as estimating that a single Roman legion would suffice 
to conquer the island. At the close of the devastating wars of 
the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Lord Montjoy's secretary asserts 
that not more than about a half million inhabitants escaped 
the edge of the sword or the horrors of famine. The first re- 



6 THE LAND TR0DBLE6 IN IRELAND. 

liable estimate was made in 1652, since which time the census 

returns have given the population as follows : 

1652 850,000 

1712 2,099,094 

178S. 4,040 000 

1805 5,395,456 

1S21 6,801,827 

1S31 '• 7,767,401 

1841 8,175,124 

1S51 6,552, 3S6 

1861 5,798,564 

1871 5,402,729 

We have seen in English journals the present population of 
Ireland estimated at a little over five and a half millions. The 
maximum was reached in 1846, when it was towards nine mil- 
lions. This was the most dense population in the known world. 
Even now Ireland, as a rural country, is only rivaled, or equaled, 
in the denseness of its population, by some provinces in China. 

At the present time the population of Ireland is over three 
times as dense, and in 184 [ it was over four or five times as 
dense, as the present population of the State of New York, ex- 
cluding the cities of New York and Brooklyn, which form, strictly 
speaking, the metropolis of the entire United States. In 1846 
there were as many as 350 persons to each square mile of 
arable land, which gives less than an average of two acres of 
cultivated land to each person. 

The rapid diminution of population since 1846 has been owing 
to the failure of crops for several successive years, and the con- 
sequent terrible famine which reached its climax in 1848 and 
swept away large numbers by absolute starvation, and to the 
subsequent emigration of great numbers to England, the United 
States, Canada and Australia. The number of Irishmen in 
England is estimated at two millions ; in the United States at 
over four millions ; in Canada and Australia at from a half mil- 
lion to a million. Thus there probably are fourteen or fif- 
teen millions of people of Irish descent in the entire world. This 
is an enormous increase from the eight hundred and fifty thousand 
of only two hundred and thirty years ago. 

The Irish are at the present time a mixed race. The original 



EARLY HISTORY OF IRELAND. 7 

inhabitants were of Celtic origin, being allied to the Highland 
Scotch, the Welsh, the ancient Britons and the present inhabitants 
of Brittany in France. Of the 6,553,386 inhabitants in 185 1, 219,- 
602 could speak only the Irish language; 1,204,684 could speak 
English and Irish ; most of the remainder could speak English only. 
A portion of the inhabitants of Ulster in the North of Ireland 
are of Scotch descent ; some thousands are of German origin ; 
and perhaps a half million or more are of English birth or de- 
scent. 

In religion the vast majority are Roman Catholic. By the 
census of 187 1 the population was thus divided ; Roman Catho- 
lic, 4.150,877 ; Protestant, 1,260,568; Jews, 258. Of the Prot- 
estant, nearly one-half belong to the Church of England; about 
the same number belong to the Presbyterian Church, and a limit- 
ed number are Wesleyan Methodists and Independents. 



ARTICLE II. 

THE EARLY HISTORY OF IRELAND. 

It is one of the most firmly established facts in history that 
race characteristics exist. The qualities and attributes of an- 
cestors are continued to their descendants to " thousands of gen- 
erations." As the history of a people progresses, new influences 
are developed from within or are added from without, and thus 
there results finally that collection of qualities which are grouped 
under the one term of "national character." 

The mass of the Irish people are undoubtedly of Celtic origin. 
This is shown by the names of rivers, towns, mountains and oth- 
er historic objects throughout the island ; and by the tumuli, 
cairns, cromlechs, druidical circles and other archaeological relics 
which have triumphed over the ravages of centuries and remain 
to attest the relationship of the early inhabitants. The very 
name " Erin," the most ancient appellation of the island, and 
that to which the natives cling with the greatest veneration, is 
derived from the Celtic "Iar" or " Eir," which signifies " West- 
ern." Ireland was probably known to the ancient Phoenicians. 
The Greeks gave it the name of " Ierna," and gave it the third 



8 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

rank in size of all the islands of the world, placing only Great 
Britain and Ceylon before it. The Romans called it " Hibernia." 
The ancient Britons named it " Iverdon," and the early Saxons 
"Ierland" or "Ireland," the " Land of the West" Strabo, writ- 
ing in the first century before Christ, places Ireland north of 
Britain. He is able to mention nothing further of the inhabi- 
tants than that they were cannibals, and that the men held it 
very noble to devour their own parents when old, and had no 
aversion to marry their own sisters and mothers. Ptolemy, writ- 
ing 150 A. D., describes the coasts of Ireland as being inhabited 
by various tribes, but he was ignorant of the inhabitants of the- 
interior. 

The Irish annalists, basing their accounts upon the romantic 
fables of their bards, give their country a history, reaching far 
back, to the very beginnings, indeed, of human history. From 
this mass of mythical legend a few probable facts can be traced. 
A curious legend attaches to "Jacob's Stone." Tradition says 
that this was cherished by one of the Early Irish tribes, with the 
belief that sovereignty would remain with that tribe or nation 
whose king was crowned with it. This stone, after having been 
preserved many generations by the Milesian kings, was taken to 
Scotland and there fraudulently detained by one of these kings. 
It was used in crowning the Scotch kings, until the time of 
Edward I. of England, who on his conquest of Scotland, trans- 
ferred it, with all of the appendages of royalty, to London, 
where it is still kept under the name of "Jacob's Stone," and is 
used in the ceremonial of the crowning of the kings of Great 
Britain, much as the Iron Crown of Lombardy is used in crown- 
ing the Italian kings. 

Another legend relates that Milesius, an Ibero-Celtic hero 
from Spain, landed in Ireland and subjugated the country. The 
son of Milesius established his capital at Tarah. To him most 
of the ancient illustrious Irish families claim to trace their origin. 
The last lineal descendant of this dynasty claiming title to the 
throne of Ireland is said to have died in n 98. The usual fate 
of these sovereigns was to die at the hand of sons, brothers, or 
others upon whom the inheritance of the throne might be liable 
to fall. 



EARLY H1ST0EY OF IRELAND. 9 

Towards the end of the fourth century, some Irish and Scotch 
tribes, which have been named the Picts and Scots, made incur- 
sions into the Roman possessions in England. The leader of a 
rival faction invited Agricola to invade and conquer Ireland. 
But the many troubles of the Roman Empire forbade further 
projects of conquest. The name of " Scotia Major" was applied 
to Ireland, and of " Scotia Novia" to Scotland, by some histo- 
rians. The interchange of names between the peoples and the 
countries of Ireland and Scotland, concerning their early history, 
was a fruitful source of dispute between Irish and Scotch writers 
in the sixteenth and following centuries, and it can hardly be 
said that the contest is entirely at an end now. 

At the beginning of the fifth century, Pope Celestine sent Pal- 
ladius to Ireland, to convert the Pagan inhabitants to Christi- 
anity. Others had preceded him. But neither their labors nor his 
produced permanent results. This was reserved for a Scotchman 
named Succath, who afterwards received the Christian name of Pat- 
rick, whose remarkable successes, extending through a life of unu- 
sual length, have given him the title of the " Apostle of Ireland." 
The chieftain of Ulster was his first convert. Soon the king, 
Logary, on hearing Patrick preach to the assembled court at 
Tarah, pronounced himself a convert. Many subjects followed 
his example. Patrick founded a school of theology at Armagh, 
which soon became so famous that students flocked thither from 
all countries of Europe. At one time seven thousand were said 
to have been under instruction there. Patrick's successors found- 
ed similar schools in other cities, which retained their fame until 
the eighth century, and sent forth Christian apostles to Scot- 
land, England and many countries of the continent of Europe. 
So famous were the theological schools, monasteries and other 
educational establishments of Ireland that this country acquired 
in the Christian world the title of " Island of the Saints" or 
"Holy Island." Missionaries from Ireland founded many fa- 
mous ecclesiastical establishments in the countries they visited, 
extending their work as far as France, Switzerland, Austria and 
Italy itself. 

To this, the most brilliant period of Irish learning, is to be 
attributed the peculiar style of art-ornamentation of illuminated 



LO THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

manuscripts and other works, which was for a long time attribu- 
ted to the Anglo-Saxons, who were indebted to the Irish mainly 
for Christianity and entirely for letters. This brilliant progress 
of civilization in Ireland was checked by the invasion of the 
Scandinavians, which continued from the end of the eighth to 
the beginning of the eleventh century. Already in the seventh 
century King Egfried, of Northumbria, in England, had made 
a disastrous incursion into Ireland, to punish the attacks of the 
Irish upon Anglesea, Mona and England. The Danes and Nor- 
mans then continued their piratical incursions, and at times held 
the entire island under severe and cruel domination. 

The work of St. Patrick and his followers did not convert 
Ireland, however, into a spiritual paradise. The brief notices 
of the civil and political condition of the country which are 
extant refer to a repetition of the turbulence, desolation and 
crime which had marked the long preceding era of paganism. 
The only event of importance, that does not refer to domestic 
commotion and foreign warfare, was a convention held at Drum- 
keath for the purpose of curbing the license and profligacy of 
the bards, which had become intolerable. This evil was merely 
diminished, however, by limiting the number of the bards, whose 
profligacy for many centuries was one of the chief means of cor- 
rupting the youth of both sexes. Continued commotion and 
incessant civil strife racked the country through the eleventh and 
part of the twelfth century. 

The Anglo-Saxons, who at this time were ruling in England, 
had little connection with Ireland, their projects for invasion and 
conquest being turned rather to the continent. The Bishop of 
Dublin, however, acknowledged the spiritual supremacy of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury. When a synod was held at Armagh, 
in 1170,10 inquire into the cause of the arrival of the English 
for conquest, the impending calamity was attributed to the sinsof 
the people, and more especially to the practice of buying Eng- 
lish children and selling them for slaves. GiraUlus Cambrensis, 
in stating the fact, adds "that the English, by a common vice of 
their country, had a custom of selling their children and kinsfolk 
into Ireland, although not driven to it by extreme poverty." 

The king of Leinster, by his tyranny, had incurred the hatred 



HISTORY FROM ENGLISH CONQUEST TO REFORMATION. 11 

of his own subjects and of the other Irish princes and chiefs, and 
he was driven from his dominion. He had recourse for assist- 
ance to Henry II of England, under whom he offered to hold 
his crown as tributary, if restored by that monarch's exertions. 
This offer was very acceptable to Henry, who had long turned 
his thoughts to the acquisition of Ireland. As early as 1 154 he 
had procured a bull from Pope Adrian, who owed his election to 
Henry's influence, conferring upon Henry the sovereignty of Ire- 
land, "in order to its civilization," upon payment of Peter's 
pence to the court of Rome. With the assistance of Welsh ad- 
venturers, Henry's general accomplished the subjection of Ire- 
land. The Irish chieftains assembled at Lismore in a great coun- 
cil or parliament, and received and swore to live by English laws. 
A synod of the clergy was also held at Cashel, who adopted for 
their future regulation the rules and doctrines of the English 
Church. After several revolts and renewed subjugations of the 
Irish by their new rulers, Roderic, the last Irish king, died in 
1 1 98, in the monastery of Cong, at the unusual age of a hundred 
and twenty years. Thus was inaugurated the rule of the English 
in Ireland which has lasted seven hundred years, and now leaves 
Ireland in the turbulent condition in which we find it to-day. 



ARTICLE III. 



HISTORY OF IRELAND FROM THE ENGLISH CONQUEST TO THE 

REFORMATION. 

We have thus traced the history of Ireland down to the be- 
ginning of the English domination. Originally Ireland was oc- 
cupied by a large number of tribes, which were ruled by chief- 
tains, much like the clans of Scotland, or the tribes of Albania, 
in Turkey, at the present day. The two descendants of the 
Iberian invader, Milesius, divided Ireland into two parts, by a 
line running east and west, from Dublin to Gal way. These di- 
visions were called Leath Conn and Leath Mogha, or Conn's 
share and Mogha's share, names that are yet familiarly given by 
the Irish to the northern and southern part of the island. A later 



12 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

division into the five petty kingdoms of Leinster, Ulster, Mun- 
ster, Connaught and Meath continued until after the English 
invasion, though the last of the lineal descendants of Milesius, hav- 
ing a claim upon the throne of Ireland, Roderic, died in 1 198. Af- 
ter the time of King John, (A. D. 1200), the country was divided 
into two parts. These were known as " Ireland within the Pale," 
or the part around Dublin where the English held direct sway ; 
and " Ireland without the Pale," or the remainder of the country 
where the sway was more indirect. The limits of the "Pale" 
varied greatly at different times, according as the native chieftains 
were more or less orderly or seditious, and as the English were 
able to send troops to hold the country in subjection. In the time 
of King John the Pale included about one-third of the island. 
Outside of the Pale his authority was merely nominal. 

King John ordained that the English laws should be intro- 
duced bodily into Ireland, with all their judicial forms. The 
sons of Roderic soon engaged in fearful contention over the por- 
tion of the Kingdom of Connaught which Henry had left to 
Roderic when he submitted to the English rule, thus repeating 
the intestine turmoil which has ever devastated the island. 

Immediately after the accession of Henry III, in 1216, the 
Irish sent to this King a list of the encroachments which had 
been made upon their rights, with a petition to be taken under 
royal protection. Henry sent them in reply a copy of the Mag- 
na Charta, placing them on the same footing with the English 
subjects. During Henry's reign Ireland was placed under super- 
vision of his youngest son, Edward, and sank into a most wretch- 
ed condition, the part within the Pale being torn by the hostili- 
ties of the rival English barons. The Irish people were dread- 
fully oppressed by the arrogant tyranny of these feudal lords. 
The chief-justice's plea to the King for not suppressing these 
disorders was that he " deemed it expedient to suffer one knave 
to destroy another, to save expense to the King!" The King 
was satisfied with this evasive answer. The wars and tumults of 
the barons continued to be tolerated, and the Irish who wished to 
secure the protection of English laws were forced to procure it 
at great cost, the fees enriching the judges. Edward II made 
an impulsive effort to restore the royal authority and to suppress 



HISTORY FROM ENGLISH CONQUEST TO REFORMATION. 13 

the exorbitant power of the English barons. But soon the royal 
mandates were defied, and the private wars of the Irish chief- 
tains without the Pale, and of the English barons within it, were 
resumed without constraint. 

After the battle of Bannockburn, Robert Bruce, King of Scot- 
land, purposed to detach Ireland from England and to attach it 
to Scotland. In 13 15 a large army of Scotch soldiers entered 
Ireland, and Bruce was crowned King of Ireland. Feidlim, 
King of Connaught, who was opposing the Scotch, was attacked 
by the English troops and slain. With him perished the last 
hope of restoring the Irish monarchy. After many successes 
Bruce met with a disastrous defeat by the English forces, and the 
Scotch forces were withdrawn from Ireland. 

No relief came to the Irish people by the expulsion of the 
Scotch. On the contrary, Edward III, after hearing favorably 
the petition of the suffering Irish, attempted in vain, by ener- 
getic measures, to restore order. Parts of Leinster, Ulster and 
Meath had been confiscated and yielded with almost sovereign 
power to the descendants of former generals. Edward extended 
this policy to other parts. In consequence a few powerful chief- 
tains, 6r feudal rulers, were able to overawe the law, and throw 
the country into convulsions by their mutual contests for superi- 
ority. The chief governor finally called for a large force of 
troops to re-establish the king's authority. As means were lack- 
ing to defray even the living expenses of the soldiers, the troops 
were quartered in the country " in coygne and livery." This 
consisted in " taking man's meat, horse's meat and money" of all 
the inhabitants, at the will of the soldier. This extortion was 
copied from the Irish method of paying their soldiers, who re- 
ceived no other pay. However this may have worked with the 
Irish tribes or clans, under the English rule in Ireland it became 
" the heaviest oppression that ever was inflicted upon any king- 
dom, Christian or heathen." 

Another remarkable blindness and folly seemed to have struck 
the English government with reference to this distressed prov- 
ince. An order was issued that all public officers whose proper- 
ty existed wholly in Ireland should be displaced, and persons 
born in England and having lands in England should replace 



14 ' THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

them. The displaced officials were naturally greatly irritated 
and exasperated at this wholesale and tyrannical procedure. 
They began to attach themselves to the Irish by marriage and 
community of interest, and became "more bitterly Irish than the 
Irish themselves." 

A new Lord-Lieutenant was sent to Ireland. He forbade any 
of the " old English" or of the King's subjects by Irish birth to 
approach his camp. A parliament, or assemblage of notables, 
was held at Kilkenny, and the famous " Kilkenny statute" was 
proclaimed. This forms one of the greatest political epochs in 
the history of Ireland. This statute enacted that marriage, fos- 
tering, " gossipred" (being sponsor of a child in baptism) was de- 
clared treasonable ; conformity to Irish law was punished in the 
same way ; the use of Irish names, language or apparel, by any 
person of English birth or descent was punishable by imprison- 
ment or the forfeiture of lands. Penalties were imposed on 
those who permitted their Irish neighbors to graze on their lands, 
who admitted them as members into ecclesiastical houses, or 
who gave encouragement to Irish bards, musicians or story- 
tellers. The execution of this statute was enforced by the anath- 
emas of the church against its violators ! The distractions of 
the country greatly increased. The English rule was practically 
limited to the portion of the Pale immediately contiguous to 
Dublin. 

During the reign of Henry IV, the Scotch made another in- 
vasion into Ireland and acquired some possession from which 
they were never wholly removed. The border districts of the 
Pale were harrassed by the Irish chieftains, and were only able 
to purchase immunity from invasion by the payment of tribute, 
called "black rent." 

The English Parliament now passed a most impolitic law, re- 
quiring all the Irish to quit England. Some time after this the 
Lord-Lieutenant, Kildare, having overcome a powerful insurrec- 
tion of the Irish and the "degenerate English," allowed his troops 
to commit the most terrible excesses, refusing to give quarter to 
the enemy and continuing the massacre until nightfall. 

A period now arrived when religion appeared as an element 
in the troubles between England and Ireland. It will be noticed 



HISTORY FROM REFORMATION TO TIME OF GEORGES. 15 

that in giving the sovereignty of Ireland to England, and in all 
the issues between these countries, the popes and the Church 
of Rome had thrown their power and influence on the side of 
England. 

Henry VIII determined to extend to Ireland the Reformation 
which he had established so easily and so firmly in England. A 
parliament, assembled at the suggestion of Browne, the first Protest- 
ant Archbishop of Dublin, acknowledged the King's supremacy in 
the fullest manner. It forbade appeals to Rome and removed 
the authority of the Romish See. An act was passed to found 
schools in every parish for teaching the natives the English lan- 
guage and the rudiments of useful knowledge. It is strange to 
say that the country became so tranquilized and loyal to the 
English throne that Francis I, King of France, then at war with 
England, failed to move the Irish to insurrection. On the con- 
trary, large numbers of Irish joined the English army to invade 
France, and fought with desperate valor. 



ARTICLE IV. 



HISTORY OF IRELAND FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE TIME OF 

THE GEORGES. 

The auspicious inauguration of the Reformation in Ireland and 
of lenient and equal government to all classes of subjects was 
destined to be short-lived and futile. The Irish clergy in gene- 
ral opposed a change of religion, and incurred the wrath of the 
impetuous Henry. The Catholic clergy were removed with vio- 
lence and acrimony. Most inveterate hostilities were engendered 
and most desolating wars harrassed the island. Large tracts of 
the country were converted into deserts, and the miserable rem- 
nants of the population were forced to feed upon grass or the 
filthiest garbage. The estates of many insurgent lords were at- 
tainted and vast properties were forfeited to the crown. 

Nearly the whole of Ulster, in the northern part of Ireland, 
passing thus into the hands of the King of England, he resolved 
to remodel this province, by removing the ancient owners and re- 



16 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

placing them by a colony of English and Scotch settlers. Estates 
varying in size from one to two thousand acres each were por- 
tioned out, the proprietors binding themselves to build substantial 
houses and to people them with English and Scotch tenantry. 
Thus was established the Protestant population of North Ireland. 
The city of London and many corporations and guilds took large 
tracts of this land and hold it to this day. 

Under the plea of justice a commission was formed to discov- 
er defective titles to estates. Since many records and deeds were 
lost during those turbulent times, vast numbers of objectionable 
owners of property were ejected in the most arbitrary manner. A 
portion of the land thus confiscated was given to informants or dis- 
coverers of defective titles. By this process over a half million 
acres passed to the crown. Strafford, the Lord-Lieutenant under 
Charles I, subverted the titles of many Catholic proprietors in 
Connaught and replaced them by Protestants, sending troops to 
overawe the juries when the titles were examined. Strafford also 
gave great encouragement to the linen manufactories in Ulster, 
which have ever since flourished so prosperously. 

To repress insurrections in Ireland during the Commonwealth, 
Cromwell entered the island with a large army. By a vigorous and, 
indeed, merciless policy he quickly overcame all opposition. The 
greater part of the Irish gentry and nobility and of the army in 
Ireland had expatriated themselves, and their estates were appor- 
tioned to loyal contributors to the expenses of the army of subju- 
gation, and to the soldiers who had not received full pay for 
services. 

These confiscations finally included the greater part of the 
surface of Ireland. Private soldiers and desperate adventurers 
often became owners of large estates which had previously be- 
longed to native families of ancient descent or to the newer 
Anglo-Irish nobility. The impoverished descendants of these 
former owners of the soil of Ireland now constitute one of the 
most turbulent elements in the population of that island. 

A series of severe repressive laws, called the " Penal Code," 
was ordained, to restrict the rights and privileges of the Catho- 
lics. Thus under it no Catholic was, under any condition, to 
remain in a town or within a certain space around it. The com- 



HISTORY FROM REFORMATION TO TIME OF GEORGES. 17 

moner sort were prohibited from quitting their place of residence 
without permission. The Catholic inhabitants of peaceable 
counties were assessed for injuries done to Protestant property in 
other counties. It was forbidden for more than ten Catholics to 
assemble together. Priests of parishes in which meetings were 
held were transported to penal colonies. Acts were also passed 
forbidding Catholics to educate their children at home or abroad, 
except under Protestant teachers or tutors. Catholics could not 
become tutors without special license. A Catholic could not be- 
come guardian to a child whose parents had conformed. A 
Catholic could not hold lands for longer than thirty-one years. 
A Catholic could not inherit lands from a Protestant relation. A 
Catholic could not qualify for office or vote at an election with- 
out first performing an oath of abjuration. These and other 
severe laws kept the Catholic population in a state of despera- 
tion. They are characterized by Burke as " the very acme of 
political persecution." 

The same violent bigotry which enacted this Penal Code 
against the Catholics was soon directed against the Non-conform- 
ists, who, under the Commonwealth, made up the body of the 
colonists in the north of Ireland. The Calvinist chapels were 
closed. The ministers were imprisoned. The Puritan popula- 
tion was not permitted to hold office of any kind, unless they 
submitted to the English Established Church. With a consent 
almost universal the stern Puritan colonists sold their grants to 
English speculators, and sought a more congenial home in New 
England, where their grandchildren a century later gave Eng- 
land cause to regret the prelatical zeal that sent them thither. 
A revival of this persecution of the Non-Conformists took place 
fifty years afterwards. Again many of the small landholders sold 
out to the owners of larger estates, and took flight to the New 
World. Ireland thus lost a valuable part of its population ; the 
number of small landed proprietors was diminished ; and acces- 
sions were made again to the liberty-loving colonists of America. 

In all this the prelatical Protestantism of England did not sin 
beyond the age. Roman Catholicism was equally and even more 
fiercely proscriptive in other lands, where it held sway, as in 
France, Spain and Austria. The fugitive Puritans in New Eng- 



18 THE LAND TR0UBLE8 IN IRELAND. 

land were themselves not prepared to exercise political liberty. 
But the memories of the Penal Code remain in Ireland to-day a 
most rankling element of disturbance. 

The principle that British colonies existed only for the benefit of 
the mother country, which in its milder applications caused the 
separation and independence of the American colonies, was ap- 
plied with intensified and exasperating severity, and with disas- 
trous consequences, to Ireland, which was near to England and 
lay at its mercy. After the war of the Restoration had closed, 
Ireland began to recuperate. The commercial spirit of monopo- 
ly of the English manufacturers, who had long viewed with a 
jealous eye the increase of the woolen manufacture in Ireland, to 
which the cheapness of living and the excellency of the pastur- 
age afforded peculiar advantages, prevailed in influencing the 
king to make a solemn assurance that he would do everything 
possible to discourage that manufacture, adding as a mitigation 
that every encouragement should be afforded to the linen manu- 
facture. The former part of the promise was rigidly adhered to ; 
the latter was disregarded. Every attempt to establish the linen 
manufacture in the South of Ireland failed, chiefly from the oppo- 
sition of the clergy to the introduction of an equitable mode for 
tithing the flax. An act of Parliament was passed prohibiting 
the exportation of wool or woolens from Ireland to other coun- 
tries than England, and the price was fixed at which wool should 
be sold to the English. The exportation of fuller's earth to 
Ireland was prohibited. With the best wool crop in Europe, and 
with unlimited water power, Ireland thus soon made barely wool- 
en goods enough for the poorer classes of her own population. 

The forests of Ireland furnished excellent timber for ship build- 
ing. The harbors of Cork and Dublin began to be filled with 
vessels built in Ireland and manned by Irish sailors. Droves of 
Irish cattle were landed in Bristol. Irish bacon and butter, and 
even Irish grain, made its way to the English markets. All this 
threatened the English farmers with ruin, just as the importation 
of American cattle, meat, butter and grain is now threatening 
English farmers with ruin. The extension of the Navigation Act 
at this time ruined Irish shipping. The exportation of cattle or 



HISTORY FROM REFORMATION TO TIME OF GEORGES. 19 

provisions to England was soon afterwards prohibited. Even when 
the Irish Parliament, through a wish to alleviate the suffering caused 
by the great fire in London, in 1666, sent to that city a free gift 
of thirty thousand cattle, the only wealth of the country at that 
time, the well-intentioned donation was rejected as an attempt to 
evade the law under the mask of benevolence. 

Irish industry was deliberately destroyed. Industrious habits, 
then, as now, the one great remedy for the temporal woes of Ire- 
land, were mercilessly blighted at the outset, and the mass of the 
people were condemned to an inheritance of poverty, out of which 
no effort of their own could lift them. 

The Irish State Church, a branch of the Protestant Anglican 
Church, was made an instrument of the greatest injustice. The 
Church in Ireland became a receptacle for persons whom English 
ministers wished to promote, but did not dare to promote at home. 
Swift's story of the highwayman who killed the bishops elect, 
stole their letters patent, and were consecrated in their places, is 
no very extreme caricature. Even within the present century a 
prime minister wished to give an Irish bishopric to the younger 
son of a noble family. The Irish primate objected, declaring 
that the young man's character was notoriously infamous, and 
that he would rather resign than consecrate him. Yet the Eng- 
lish cabinet persisted. The primate's scruples were in some way 
overcome, and the young man of notoriously infamous character 
was forced upon the bench of bishops. 

In other ways, too, Ireland was used as a convenience. Ire- 
land had a pension list, for services honorably distinguished. On 
this list are found the names of royal mistresses, favorites, poor 
foreign relations, or corrupt officials, whose services had been 
bought. This was a frequent subject of complaint in the Irish 
Parliament. The complainant was generally silenced by being 
made a recipient of polluted bounty. The Viceroy's letters for 
nearly a century contain reports, at the close of each session, of 
the members of the two Irish houses who had been corrupted, 
and of the terms which had been paid. 

The abominable injustices and oppressions which England ex- 
ercised over Ireland during this period, and which were contin- 
ued afterwards until the present century, some of them not be- 



20 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

ing corrected indeed at the present day, make one's blood tingle 
at the mere reading. A thousandth part of the wrongs which 
Ireland has suffered at the hands of England would be deemed 
sufficient to justify a people in rising in desperate revolt against 
such odious misrule. 



ARTICLE V. 



IRELAND FROM THE TIME OF GEORGE II UNTIL THE- DISSOLU- 
TION OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT, A. D. l8co. 

The operation of the Penal Code, while it enslaved the Catho- 
lics, pauperized the country. The great mass of the population 
was deprived of the main stimulus to industry, the hope of 
improving their condition by their own exertions. The great 
landed proprietors found their lands decreasing in value, from the 
neglect of agricultural improvement. The degradation of the 
Catholics reached its lowest point in a case where one of that 
faith was gravely told in a court of justice that the law did not 
recognize the existence of a papist. 

A state of society so anomalous, in which universal liberty was 
the avowed principle of the British government, yet whose slav- 
ery, unmitigated by the protection which sordid interest extends 
to the preservation of individual property, was the practice, could 
not but be most precarious. The government became aware of 
the dangers, through the threat of the young Pretender to the 
crown of England to invade Ireland. Lord Chesterfield was 
sent over in the spirit of conciliation to ward off the threatened 
danger. An accidental circumstance gave this astute diplomat 
occasion to inaugurate the amelioration of the condition of the 
Catholics, which has continued to the present day. The Catholics 
had held their assemblies for religious worship in the most secluded 
places. The rewards offered by the laws for the detection of their 
priests, or of those who attended their ceremonies, compelled them 
to the strictest secresy. The floor of a building in one of the nar- 
rowest streets of Dublin, where mass was being celebrated, gave 
way, and caused the death or mutilation of a number of the wretch- 



FROM GEORGE II TO DISSOLUTION OF IRISH PARLIAMENT. 21 

ed beings who had there assembled to worship in the way in which 
they had been trained. Lord Chesterfield, with the tact which 
characterized him in the annals of fashionable society, seized the 
opportunity to declare that he would not be a party to a religious 
system liable to the hazard of such results. 

The accession of George III was seized upon by the Catholics 
to present appeals for the alleviance of the injustices of the 
Penal Code. At this time some vital change was needed in the 
administration 4 of the country. The revenue was declining, and 
the peasantry were every year becoming more destitute and dis- 
contented. The wretched sufferers, attributing their misery to 
the exaction of tithes and the enclosure of many lands hitherto 
left open in commonage, banded themselves together in large 
bodies at night and destroyed the new enclosures. These 
depredators were called " Whiteboys," from their wearing white 
shirts over their clothes, to be known to each other in their 
nocturnal expeditions. They proceeded also to attack persons 
obnoxious to them, particularly the tithe proctors, treating with 
barbarous cruelty those who fell into their hands. The British 
government retaliated by a body of severe and arbitrary repressive 
laws, known as the Whiteboy Acts, many of which are still in force. 
The landholders were won over to the side of the government by 
giving them more of the offices of trust and profit, and by indulg- 
ing their enmity against the Catholics, who were still suspected 
of being cemented in secret union for the recovery of their for- 
feited estates. 

The severity of the Whiteboy Acts caused a temporary cessation 
of insubordination in one part of the country, only to give vent to 
it in another part. The disturbances in the South of Ireland have 
been imputed to Catholic conspiracy, aided by foreign, mostly 
French, influence. But a similar systematized spirit of outrage 
now displayed itself in the northern part of Ulster, which was 
chiefly inhabited by a Protestant population. The real and im- 
mediate cause of the outbreak was the same in both parts of the 
country. High rents and the rapacity of the agents of the 
absentee landlords drove the people to insurrection. The revolt- 
ers in Ulster took the name of "Hearts of Steel." Emigration 
to the American colonies was the consequence of the depressed 



22 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

state of the peasantry and the severe laws enacted against them. 
The war with these colonies, by closing this vent for the discharge 
of the discontented population, caused the elements of disturb- 
ance to increase at home. The war against the revolting colonies 
in America also closed the trade of Ireland, America having been 
the great market for Irish linen, the sole thriving branch of Irish 
manufacturers. An embargo was also laid on the export of pro- 
visions from Ireland, in favor of some great English contractors. 
The people of Ireland now oegan to retaliate against the severity 
of the English restrictions to Irish industry, by banding together 
to confine themselves to the use of their own manufactures. 

When the French revolution broke out, the Protestants began 
to call more loudly for reform, and the Catholics to press more 
openly for admission into the pale of the constitution. Some re- 
forms were granted. Meantime fierce and deadly contention 
broke out between the peasantry of opposite religious creeds in 
the northern and central counties of Ireland. The Catholics first 
took the name of " Defenders." Afterwards they joined the 
party which had been formed to effect a separation from the 
British crown, and were called the "United Irishmen." The 
Protestants took the name of " Orangemen." The feuds between 
these two parties have not yet subsided. They have been carried 
across wide oceans, and have broken out in turmoil and riots 
wherever the Irish emigrants have settled, in Canada, the United 
States and Australia. 

The feud between these parties soon showed itself by acts of 
augmented atrocity on both sides. The means of aggression 
adopted by the "Defenders" consisted in nocturnal plunder, 
house-burnings and murders. The Orangemen, backed by the 
sanction of the government, had recourse to statutes of increased 
rigor, and to military violence beyond the law. The " United 
Irishmen" having invited the French to invade Ireland, as was 
supposed, the government had recourse to still stronger measures 
to put down the spirit of insurrection. The habeas corpus act was 
suspended. Domiciliary visits throughout the rural parts were 
frequent. Meetings of the people were dispersed by violence. 
Torture was inflicted to enforce confession from suspected 
persons. Large bodies of soldiers were allowed to live at free 



FROM GEORGE II TO DISSOLUTION OF IRISH PARLIAMENT. 23 

quarters in suspected districts. The relaxation of discipline and 
consequent outrages caused General Abercrombie to declare, in 
general orders to the troops, that " the army was in a state of 
licentiousness which rendered it formidable to every one but the 
enemy." General Lake was sent to replace the outspoken 
Abercrombie. By his commands the soldiers exercised an almost 
uncontrolled authority, in which they were sanctioned by instruc- 
tions from the government empowering the army to use ; force 
at the discretion of the officers against the people. 

The United Irishmen finally, in 1778, organized an open rebel-* 
lion. This rebellion was repressed by the British troops. The 
operations of the army were attended at times by severe and al- 
most merciless rigor. In some cases no quarter was given to 
Irish troops after they had surrendered unconditionally. These 
military operations were seconded by most violent acts on the 
part of the civil government. Numbers of persons arrested on 
suspicion were tied up, and flogged, to extort confession. In the 
rural regions more refined forms of agony were adopted to elicit 
discovery or to- gratify revenge. In some cases they hanged up 
their victim and let him down again just before life was extinct, 
thus prolonging and repeating the sufferings of strangulation. On 
the heads of others they applied caps lined with heated pitch, 
which, when fastened on and allowed to cool, were suddenly torn 
off, carrying with them the hair and skin. In the spirit of fiend- 
ish mockery they cut ridges in the hair of others in the form of a 
cross, and, filling up the furrows with gunpowder, set fire to it. 
In two cases, companies of suspected persons, some of them re- 
spectable farmers, being arrested on suspicion, were deliberately 
shot, without even the form of a trial, lest they should join the 
rebel forces when the troops were removed. In retaliation for this 
barbarous method of carrying on warfare and of administering 
justice, the insurgents put to death by the sword, the pike and the 
musket many hundred prisoners from among the British troops, 
who were charged with having exercised these atrocities upon the 
Irish insurgents. 

The rebellion of 1798 was made the occasion for dissolving the 
Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland, and uniting them in one 
Imperial Parliament. "The Union broke .the strength of the 



2 4 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

aristocracy [in Ireland] ; it untied the hands of the government ; 
it loosened the dependence of the government upon a single par- 
ty, and restored to the State the privilege of good government. 
Ireland, in fact, for centuries possessed but two classes of 
society, the rich and the poor. There was no solid bond between 
the crown and the people. The feudalism which the religion of 
Luther in England and that of Calvin in Scotland had tended 
much to annihilate nourished in most parts of Erin in all its des- 
solating vigor." 

The Act of Union did not produce at once the results promised 
by its advocates. It neither tranquilized the country nor aided 
its material prosperity. The Protestant aristocracy found their 
influence diminished by it. The Catholics soon discovered the 
hopelessness of securing through this means a removar of their 
political disabilities. Unfortunately a rash and futile attempt at 
organized rebellion was made three years after the Union was 
effected, under the leadership of Robert Emmett, which not only 
retarded the approach of the era of good feeling, but also was the 
occasion of renewed vigilance by the Imperial Government, which 
held Ireland more completely in its power than when Ireland had 
a separate parliament of its own. Notwithstanding all this, the 
climax was passed in the griefs and wrongs which Ireland had 
suffered from the hands of England during a long period of sev- 
en centuries. 



ARTICLE VI. 

THE INDUSTRIAL AND AGRICULTURAL CONDITION OF IRELAND. 

We have thus traced the salient points in the history of Ireland 
which have relation to the origin and development of the troubles 
which arc at present agitating that country. We saw Ireland 
soon after the fall of the Roman Empire and the introduction of 
Christianity into northern Europe become in the seventh and 
eighth centuries the center of Christian education and of general 
culture north of the Alps. We then saw the island torn by 
intestine feuds and wars, and finally delivered to the rule of the 



INDUSTRIAL AND AGRICULTURAL CONDITION OF IRELAND. 25 

English kings, through the treachery of Irish rulers and by the 
sanction and authority of the Pope of Rome. Then followed seven 
hundred years of arbitrary and cruel rule by England, during 
which the antagonisms of race, religion, class distinctions and 
commercial interests were all turned to the injury of the Irish 
people. The lands were several times confiscated almost bodily 
and delivered to new classes of owners. The whole dreary 
history reads more like the rule of an Asiatic despot over a 
conquered and helpless race, than like the rule of an enlightened 
Christian nation over a province within sight of its very shores. 

With the close of the last century the misery and degradation 
of Ireland reached its lowest point. Since the close of the Na- 
poleonic wars, more especially, constant agitation has produced 
many changes, which have greatly ameliorated the legal condi- 
tion and relations of the Irish people. 

In the year 1829 the famous Penal Code, which included the 
disabilities and special penalties against the Roman Catholics, 
was abolished. Thenceforward Catholics were allowed to sit in 
Parliament and to hold civil or administrative offices. In 1833 
the foundation was laid for a system of national education, which 
is supported by grants of public money for the education of the 
poor without distinction of religious creed. In 1869 a Land Act 
was passed, greatly restricting the powers of landlords, especially 
as to the arbitrary eviction of tenants. In 1870 the Anglican 
Church was disestablished. All governmental restrictions to the 
development of agricultural, manufacturing or commercial indus- 
try have been removed. Actual governmental aid has been prof- 
fered to promote the fisheries and other sources of wealth. It is 
but just to say that at present no disposition is manifested by the 
British Government or the British Parliament to deal otherwise 
than justly, honorably and generously with Ireland in all those 
points where the government at the present day can touch the 
evils which have been inherited from the seven hundred years of 
previous misrule of this distressed island. 

As will be readily seen, however, many of the evils and wrongs 
from which the people in Ireland at the present day are suffering 
are of such a nature that they can never be righted. In this Ire- 
land is not peculiar. History is full of examples where races, 



I 
26 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

nations, communities and individuals suffer unjustly, by inheri- 
tance, from wrongs which never can be righted. To chafe and 
writhe under wrongs done to ancestors five, ten or twenty gen- 
erations ago is only folly. 

Many of the descendants of the former owners of confiscated 
estates in Ireland have for ages and centuries gone through the 
form of conveying by will these confiscated estates to their chil- 
dren or legal heirs, though these hypothetical owners are living in 
the most abject poverty and misery, as have their ancestors be- 
fore them through all these weary centuries. This futile effort to 
keep up the form of legal ownership to vast and valuable estates 
is to-day an important factor among the general disturbing ele- 
ments in the land troubles which have sO long agitated this island, 
and which are now so pre-eminently occupying the attention of 
the British Parliament and government. 

What we have thus seen of the antecedent history of Ireland 
may thus explain to a large degree the present poverty and mis- 
ery of the people of this beautiful but unfortunate island. The 
contrast between the agricultural, manufacturing and commercial 
prosperity of England and Scotland and the poverty and misery 
of Ireland forms one of the most painful pictures that meet 
the eye of the traveler in Europe. How to correct the present 
low economical condition of Ireland is a problem to-day which 
taxes the astuteness of the most able of British political economists 
and statesmen. 

Let us glance at some of the details of the wretched condition 
of industry in Ireland. In the first place, as we said in our 
first article, the coasts of Ireland abound with fish, which 
might form a most remunerative source of wealth, and go a great 
way to prevent the ever-threatening famine which so frequently 
ravages that island. Yet, despite an annual bounty by the gov- 
ernment of live thousand pounds for the encouragement of fisher- 
ies, the number of men and boats employed in the fishing trade 
has decreased one-half within the last forty years. The govern- 
ment has finally withdrawn the bounty, as it produced no valuable 
results. Commissions of relief, in times <■•>( famine and distress, 

have found groups of starving men roaming listlessly along the 

shores of bays, whose waters teem with nourishing and palatable- 



INDUSTRIAL AND AGRICULTURAL CONDITION OF IRELAND. 27 

fish, literally starving in sight of food which they lacked the ener- 
gy to capture. 

The only important branch of manufactures in Ireland is that 
of linen, and this nourishes only in the northern portion, where a 
large population of orderly and skilled workmen render it safe for 
capital to seek investment in this industry. 

The same conditions which have caused cotton to travel from 
Georgia to New England to be made into cloth cause wool to go 
from Ireland to England to be manufactured into cloth. There is 
in Central and Southern Ireland no population of skilled and indus- 
trious workmen to be employed in woolen manufactories. Also 
the cost of transportation of wool from Galway, Cork or Dublin 
to Liverpool or Lancaster is unimportant. And, further, the vast 
capital invested in woolen manufacture in England enables the 
capitalists there to crush out any rising industry in Ireland. It 
may be added that the prospect of being shot on his way home 
some fine evening, by some frenzied Irishman, is not a strong in- 
ducement to capitalists to enter upon the erection of factories in 
this turbulent country. . Of other than woolen manufactures Ire- 
land has practically none whatever. Her mining and commercial 
interests also are unimportant. There being thus no great man- 
ufacturing, mining or commercial centers, there is no home market 
for the surplus products of the soil. All agricultural products 
must seek a foreign market. They are transported mostly to 
Liverpool and Glasgow. 

The vast majority of the population of Ireland is thus engaged 
in the cultivation of the soil. We approach, therefore, the great 
question upon which the agitations of this turbulent people have 
turned for the last fifty years, or since the repeal of the Penal 
Code in 1829. 

As in England and Scotland, so in Ireland, almost the entire 
soil is held in very large estates. These estates are cut up into 
"holdings," or portions leased to separate tenants. In England 
and Scotland the farmers prefer to hire land rather than to own it. 
They do not purchase when the opportunity offers, but rather sell 
any land they may chance to own if favorable opportunity presents 
itself. The theory is that a farmer who has from one to five thous- 
and pounds of capital and a thorough knowledge of farming is able 



28 INK LAND TROUBLES IN [BELAUD. 

to work a much larger farm than he can purchase. The large 
farmer, like the manufacturer, does no manual work on his farm. 
Like the cotton or woolen manufacturer, lie uses his superior abili- 
ty in superintendence, hiring mere laborers to do the manual work. 
The English farmers are, therefore, men of much business ability, 
and often rise to competency and even wealth, forming an import- 
ant portion of the middle classes, which contribute so much to the 
stability of the English governmental and social system. 

In Ireland the same general system of letting out the large 
estates of the landholders in holdings to tenants prevails as in 
England. The conditions of tenantry are in many respects very 
different, however, from those in England. One characteristic 
difference is in the size of the holdings." The land of Ireland is 
owned by 12,000 landlords. The number of holdings is about 
600,000. These holdings are distributed in about the following 
proportions : 

Number of Average size 

Holdings. in acres. 

40,000 'f an acre 

84,000 3 acres. 

180,000 10 " 

140,000 22 

70,000 40 " 

55,000 74 " 

21,000 153 " 

8,500 355 " 

1,500 [>3O0 " 

It will thus be seen that the Irish farmers are a very different 
class of persons from the English farmers. One-half of the hold- 
ings are less than ten acres in size, giving an average of about five 
or six acres toaholding. Only 31,000 of the holdings rover more 
than 100 acres apiece. Only ro,ooo include over 200 acn 
Thus only a very small proportion of the Irish, tenant farmers 
cultivate their laud on the same scale with the usual English 
farmer. On the other hand, the great majorit) of Irish tenant 
farmershave holdings which scarcely rise in si < to the dignity of 
a respectable garden. This circumstance alone is sufficient to keep 
the Irish tenant continually in a precarious condition, as to pro- 
curing only a bare subsistence tor his family, even if he owned 
the land of Ins holding. When to this is added the payment of 



Si 
Hoi 


ize of 
dings. 


One 


acre or less 


1 


to 


5 acres, 


5 


k 


15 " 


15 


(i 


30 " 


30 


4 1 


50 " 


50 


a 


100 " 


100 


<< 


200 " 


200 


1 < 


5"" " 


Over 


500 " 



INDUSTRIAL AND AGRICULTURAL CONDITION OF IRELAND. 29 

rent, the tenant is in a chronic state of distress and of difficulty 
with his landlord. Let one or more unfavorable seasons diminish 
or ruin his crops, and he is in destitution and misery, if not 
threatened with starvation. Thus . occurred the great famine of 
1846-48, Thus occurred the great destitution and distress of the 
last two years. Thus ruin, distress and famine will continue to 
occur as long as this system of exceedingly small holdings is 
practiced. 

The English^ landlord has the right to refuse to renew a lease 
to a tenant, when the lease expires. The lease in England is for a 
limited time, as from five to twenty-five years, the more usual 
term being ten or fifteen years. An English landlord can thus 
enlarge the holdings at will, or he can throw a holding into a 
park or cut it up into city or village lots. 

By a traditional common law which has indeed been ratified in 
some regards by definite statute, in Ireland, a holding can be 
continued indefinitely if the tenant desires to renew it and pays the 
rent promptly. This places the Irish landlord at a great disad- 
vantage, as to the profitable management of his estate. It also 
greatly embarrasses the renewal of a lease. An odious or unprofit- 
able tenant cannot be displaced. The leases in Ireland«have 
frequently been very long, often extending over sixty or ninety 
years. In some cases they extend nine hundred and ninety- 
nine years, probably owing to the fear of dispute of title, when the 
estates were confiscated and sold to the new owners. These 
exceedingly long leases are a fruitful source of anti-rent disturb- 
ance. 

The English farmer contracts with the landlord for the holding 
to be placed in a certain condition of repair ; also that the 
tenant shall provide certain fixtures, or movable furniture, tools, 
cattle, etc. 

The Irish landlord is not obligated to provide anything except the 
bare soil, not even houses or barns, fences or drainage. Buildings, 
fixtures, tools and cattle must be provided by the tenant. They 
are his property while he remains. But if he leaves a holding he 
receives no compensation for any buildings he may erect or any 
repairs he may make. This is a most fruitful source and cause of 
dissatisfaction and turmoil among tenants. 



30 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

ARTICLE VII. 

THE AGRICULTURAL CONDITION OF THE ISLAND. 

[Continued.] 

Another fruitful source of irritation lies in the fact that not 
only is the Irish peasant forced to make all the improvements 
upon his holding, but also the landlord has the power to increase 
the rent, on account of the increased value which the tenant has 
given to the land through his own outlay of labor and money. 
In many cases where the tenant has reclaimed bo,g land, the rent 
has soon been raised to several times the value in fee simple of 
the land before the tenant had reclaimed it. The fact that all 
improvements, all fences, houses and even ditches and drains are 
made by the tenant is used to support the claim that the tenant 
has, in justice and equity, a certain proprietary right in the soil 
which he has contributed so much to improve in condition and 
value. 

The above does not apply to any large extent to the mode of 
leasing the estates in the Ulster provinces in the north of Ireland. 
There the so-called " Tenant Right" system prevails. By this is 
meant that the tenant has the ownership in the improvements he has 
made, and that, when a change in tenants is made, for any reason, 
the new tenant is compelled to purchase, at a fair valuation, all 
the improvements which his predecessor has made on the hold- 
ing. It will be noticed, however, that under the " Tenant Right" 
system, the landlord does not pay for nor purchase the improve- 
ments which any succession of tenants may make on his land. 

It is urged by some that the extension of the Ulster " Tenant 
Right" system to the middle and southern parts of Ireland would 
cure the land troubles of the island. Indeed, this system was 
legalized for the whole island in 1870, but it is practically carried 
into effect but little beyond the province of Ulster. It is charged 
that the advantages of this system are greatly neutralized by the 
right of the landlords to advance the rent at will. 

The soil of Ireland is of very unequal quality and excellence. 
It is one of the most unfortunatccircumstances in the land ques- 
tion, that in the parts of Ireland containing the poorest soil there 
is the greatest proportion of very small holdings. In Connaught, 
for example, many hundreds, if not thousands, of families eke 



AGRICULTURAL CONDITION OF THE ISLAND. 31 

out a miserable existence from holdings containing only from 
half an acre to an acre, and this of most wretched soil. These 
miserable tenants, who have no practical knowledge beyond the 
.rudest processes of agriculture, are only able to keep their fami- 
lies from starvation by the addition to their income of cash which 
they derive from going to England and working for farmers there 
during the harvest season. 

The utter failure of crops in England in 1879 cut off this addi- 
tion to the income of the poverty-stricken Irish tenant farmers. 
The introduction into England of the modern American system 
of gathering harvests by machinery threatens to cut off perma- 
nently this aid to Irish farmers, even when the crops are excel- 
lent in quality and quantity. 

It will be easily imagined that under all these untoward circum- 
stances the great improvements which during the last thirty years 
have entirely revolutionized the science of agriculture, and which 
have added so greatly to the wealth of farms and farmers in ad- 
vanced countries of Europe and America, have been adopted by 
only a very small proportion of the farmers in Ireland. As a rule 
the mode of cultivating the soil is exceedingly rude and primi- 
tive. In many parts the plough is unknown, and the spade and 
the hoe are the only utensils employed. Through lack of means, 
enterprise and knowledge, fertilizers are rarely used. The mild 
and moist atmosphere furnishes the chief nourishment to the pota- 
to, which is the staple and often the sole vegetable grown on the 
acre or the half acre held by the wretched tenant. A slight addi- 
tion to the moisture of the weather during the late summer or the 
early fall causes this single crop of potatoes to rot before they 
ripen, and thus famine and starvation stare several millions of 
these wretched " farmers" in the face. 

The original division of the population into tribes (or clans) 
prevailed in Ireland, as in Scotland, until the close of the seven- 
teenth century, or until the suppression of the Rebellion by 
Cromwell, that is, nearly a thousand years after it had been abol- 
ished in England and France. The influence of this tribal sys- 
tem has been one of the chief causes of the present subdivision 
of large estates into exceedingly small holdings. Indeed, in 
many regards, Ireland is a primitive country, as much so as Al- 



32 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

bania, Turkestan or Senegambia. Some astute English sociolo- 
gists even claim that this primitive condition of society is an 
advantage to the British Empire, since it furnishes a source to 
supply the race exhaustion, which history has shown to befall 
every nation, sooner or later, that does not renew its vigor from 
some primitive stock of people. This fact of the primitive state 
of a large part of the population of Ireland, and their backward- 
ness in entering the tide of civilization, which has flowed so 
steadily forward in England and the continent of Europe for the 
last thousand years, is a most important element in understand- 
ing the troubles which are continually agitating this island. The 
condition would be in a certain measure repeated, if the State of 
Georgia or Alabama were settled wholly by blacks, who were 
portioned out upon parcels of land of from half an acre to five 
or ten acres to a family, the blacks being left to cultivate the 
land in any way they might choose, but being compelled to pay 
heavy rents to white landlords, residing at a distance, with whom 
the black tenants never come into personal communication, rela- 
tionship or friendship. 

As a combined result of all the historical influences which we 
have traced at some length in previous articles, of the primitive 
condition of the large portion of the Irish population, and of the 
extreme poverty of the miserable tenants of small holdings, we 
can easily see what is the moral status of the people. Here, as 
elsewhere, the old proverb holds good, that Satan finds occupa- 
tion for idle hands. The lower the grade of civilization, the 
more base and groveling the forms of vice which idleness induces. 
The coarse drunkenness and brawling which are found constantly 
in the villages of Ireland make that country a by-word among 
the nations of Europe. The general moralit) of the people is of 
the lowest possible grade. 

Enforced idleness has entailed upon an imporant portion of 
the population habits of indolence, unthriftiness and unclean- 
uess, out of which they cannot be lifted without external help. 
The extreme degradation of the population o( southern and 

western Ireland has attracted the attention of writers and trav- 
elers for centuries. After the close of the Rebellion which Crom- 
well crushed. Sir W. Petty writes : "These 1,100,000 people do 



AGRICULTURAL CONDITION OF THE ISLAND. 33 

live in about 200,000 families or houses, whereof there are about 
16,000 which have more than one chimney in each, and about 
24,000 which have but one ; all the other houses, being 160,000, 
are wretched, nasty cabins without chimney, window or door- 
shut, even worse than those of the savage American Indians." 

In 1835 a French political economist, Gustave de Beaumont, 
visited Ireland. He writes ' " I have seen the Indian in his for- 
ests and the negro in his chains, and I thought I had beheld the 
lowest term of human misery; but I did not then know the lot of 
Ireland. Irish misery forms a type by itself, of which there 
exists nowhere else either model or imitation. In seeing it one 
recognizes that no theoretical limits can be assigned to the mis- 
fortunes of nations. The condition which in Ireland is above 
poverty would be among other people frightful distress. The 
miserable classes which in France are justly pitied would form 
in Ireland a privileged class." The German historian Von Rau- 
mer, writing in the same year, says : " No words could express 
the frightful truth which in Ireland everywhere meets the eye." 
The distinguished German traveler Kohl, says : " The Tartars of 
the Crimea are poor and barbarous, but they look at least like 
human beings ; but nowhere save in Ireland can be found human 
creatures living from one year's end to another on the same root, 
berry or weed. There are animals, indeed, that live so, but 
human 'beings nowhere, save in Ireland." In the same year the 
English traveler Inglis writes : " It is undeniable that the condi- 
tion of the Irish poor is immeasurably worse than that of the West 
India slave." Barrow writes : " No picture drawn by the pencil, 
none by the pen, can possibly convey an idea of the sad reality. 
There is no other country on the face of the earth in which such 
extreme misery prevails as in Ireland." The Abbe Perraud 
wrote" in i860 : " How great was my astonishment, twenty years 
after the journey of Beaumont, to come upon the very same des- 
titution which he so eloquently described in 1835 ! The lot of 
the poorest peasant in France cannot compare with the misery 
of a large part of Ireland." All careful and observing travelers 
have noticed the same terrible destitution and misery, even 
when there is no special failure of crops and consequent famine. 

We have spoken thus far only of the misery of the tenants of 



34 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

the smaller holdings. The present agitation in Ireland is only 
on behalf of the tenant farmers. But there is another class, whose 
misery is lower, if possible, than that of this smaller class of ten- 
ants. That is the class oi floating laborers, who have no fixed 
home, but depend upon the tenant farmers for employment. 
There are 600,000 tenants, whose families include over 3,000,000 
people, or rather more than half the entire population. There 
are, perhaps, 250,000 people engaged in trades and manufactures, 
representing a population of about 1,000,000. There remain, 
perhaps, 600,000 floating laborers. One-half of these are em- 
ployed on the large farms at a little above starvation wages. 
The remainder, representing a population of about 1,000,000, 
are the most forlorn and wretched people of this most wretched 
island. They are every year and almost every month upon the 
verge of starvation. 

A few further important points remain to be considered, in 
order to gain a comprehensive and intelligent idea of the influ- 
ences which intensify the destitution and sufferings of Ireland. 

Perhaps, first of all, should be mentioned the " absenteeism" 
of most of the landlords. Large estates in Ireland are owned by 
corporations in England. The incomes from this class of estates 
are sent to England and do not return to enrich, in any form, the 
country from which they are drawn. Many of the owners of 
large estates, obtaining them frequently by inheritance, never go 
to Ireland at all, but receive their rents through the medium of 
"middle-men," or agents. Some landlords occasionally visit their 
estates and, during their short residence there, hold that sort of 
diminutive " court," which the British, like other aristocracies, 
hold at the mansions or castles where they temporarily or perma- 
nently reside. The complaint against "absentee" landlords is 
that the income from their estates is taken out of Ireland and 
is spent in England, thus constantly and permanently draining 
Ireland of a portion of her wealth. But it is said that the 
wealth) landlord finds little congenial society in Ireland; the pros- 
pect of being shot at by some shiftless but embittered and reveng- 
ful cottier does not add to the attractiveness, to a landlord and 

his family, of a residence in Ireland. On the other hand the 

greal British capital, London, the seaside resorts of Great Britain, 



AGRICULTURAL CONDITION OF THE ISLAND. 35 

and the genial climate, social advantages and art treasures of 
the Continent, offer positive advantages for residence to the land- 
lords and their families. Besides, many owners of estates in Ire- 
land own also estates in England and Scotland, on which they 
prefer to reside. With all this, the two great evils complained of 
concerning "absenteeism" are that the income from the estates 
is not spent in the country, and that the owners of the land have 
no personal oversight of tenants and little sympathy with their 
sufferings. 

Another evil, which is the outgrowth of absenteeism, lies in the 
fact that the landlords often employ " middle-men," or agents, to 
arrange the holdings, and to fix and collect the rents. It is to 
the interest of middle-men to keep the rents up as high as possi- 
ble, and to pursue with relentless vigor tenants who are back- 
ward in their payment of rent. 

Another drain upon the resources of Ireland consists in the 
Imperial taxes, which are taken from this country and expended 
in the conduct of the civil government and the military and 
naval establishments in England. Through Imperial taxation 
some ^£5,000,000 is drained from Ireland every year. 

The exportation^ of food, grain and hay from Ireland to Eng- 
land amount to about ^60,000,000 every year. There is thus 
seen the apparently anomalous spectacle of vast quantities of pro- 
visions being sent away to a distant market, from districts where 
a large portion of the population are upon the verge of starvation. 
It has been exceedingly difficult to get down to the ultimate facts 
as to the real amount of unusual distress in certain seasons, from 
the fact that after relief committees have distributed charity 
through certain regions, tenants, and laborers, who have accepted 
relief, have been known to send to market, from a hidden pit, 
large quantities of potatoes. This dishonesty and duplicity has 
led many Englishmen to hear with doubt and incredulity the 
oft-repeated cries of distress from this ever-discussed but little- 
understood Ireland. The exportation of food must follow the 
laws of trade, during times of famine as well as at other times. 
There is no reason why a farmer who has a thousand bushels of 
potatoes to sell should not send them to the best market, be it 
Liverpool or Glasgow, and take the money to pay his rent and 



36 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

his laborers. Nor should he feel personally bound to divide his 
potatoes with his poor or starving countrymen ten miles distant. 
Still the startling and horrible fact often occurs that destitute and 
starving people see wagons laden with potatoes pass by their very 
doors, under police escort, to the steamer dock, to be borne away 
to hated England. What wonder that tumults and riots thus 
occur ! 

ARTICLE VIII. 

FEASIBLE AND UNFEASIBLE REMEDIES FOR THE LAND TROUBLES. 

The gravity of the sufferings and distress of the agricultural 
population of Ireland has attracted the active attention of states- 
men, political economists and philanthropists in England for the 
last fifty years. Statesmen from the continent of Europe have 
made careful studies of the extraordinary and phenomenal econo- 
mic condition of this country, as the German Von Raumer, the 
French De Beaumont, and the Italian Sismondi and Cavour. 
During the past two years British newspapers, magazines and 
reviews have been flooded with articles treating of the subject 
from every standpoint. Every possible project for curing these 
evils which the human imagination could conjure up has been 
devised and presented. The most radical of these, perhaps, is 
the heroic proposition of a cold-blooded conservative to " sink 
the island fifty feet below the level of the ocean for forty-eight 
hours, and then to lift it up and commence anew !" On the oth- 
er extreme, the most radical but equally impracticable commu- 
nistic and socialistic schemes have had open champions. Of 
serious schemes, which have had strong, earnest and combined 
advocates, we shall present a few of the most prominent and im- 
portant. 

First of all we may mention the scheme of the u Land 
Leaguers," under the leadership of Mr. Parnell. The Land 
League is a secret organization, and only a portion of its plans 
and principles have been made public. One of the announced 
principles is to have all tenants agree to pay only a certain rental, 
which is to be a certain percentage upon the valuation of the 
land as assessed in 1841, called the " Griffith's Valuation," from 
the name of the superintendent of the census at that time. To 



FEASIBLE AND UNFEASIBLE REMEDIES FOR THE TROUBLES. 37 

enforce this, they agree to hold no communication, by way of 
trade, with any tenant who pays any higher rate of rent, with 
any landlord who evicts tenants for non-payment of rent, with 
any farmer who takes a holding from which a tenant has been 
evicted, or with any tradesman who buys or sells of such a ten- 
ant or landlord. This feature of the Land League movement is 
an invasion upon the laws of property as recognized in all civil- 
ized lands. The League also proposes, by continued agitation, 
within legal and constitutional limits, to bring about a change in 
the mode of tenure of land in Ireland. It is barely possible, 
though not probable, that this agitation may lead to legislation by 
Parliament which will alleviate in some degree the causes of 
distress in Ireland. But it has within itself no elements of suc- 
cess in the main object for which it has been organized. 

Another project goes by the name of " Home Rule," by which 
is meant the dissolving of the Imperial Parliament, and the re- 
establishment of the Irish Parliament. This would involve a large 
additional expense to Ireland. The new Parliament would be 
under the control of the landlords. Or, if a contest should arise 
between landlords and tenants, it would probably end in turmoil 
and riot. But the probability of Home Rule being conceded by 
the Imperial Parliament is too small to be seriously considered. 

A few extremists claim that the balm for Ireland's woes is to be 
found in perfect national independence — in entire separation from 
the British Crown. This, if attainable at all, could only be 
reached through a long and bloody struggle, which would add 
immeasurably to the immediate and future woes of Ireland. It 
is difficult to see how, even if national independence were peace- 
ably granted to-morrow, the social, political and economical ele- 
ments, as they exist to-day, could be molded into a harmonious 
or, indeed, into an endurable state of social order ; or how the 
sufferings of the small holders and of the floating laborers could 
be thereby in any regard relieved or removed. Like Home Rule, 
Irish independence will not be granted. 

Another project which has been favorably advocated by many 
philanthropic statesmen, both British and continental, is the 
establishment of an extensive system of " Peasant Proprietorship." 
By this is meant the cutting up of many or all of the large es- 



38 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

tates into small farms, which shall become the property of the 
class who are now tenant farmers. Thus the cultivators of the 
soil will become the owners, and will have an interest in it, which, 
as tenants, they never can have. Many plans have been suggest- 
ed for effectuating this scheme. Some have proposed that the 
Imperial Government shall buy up all the estates in Ireland, and 
shall then divide the land anew into holdings of about thirty 
acres each. These holdings, or farms, are to be sold to the 
present tenant farmers on long time. Thirty-five years, or the 
average length of a generation, has been proposed as the time of 
payment, which is to be made in equal annual installments. 

It is charged by opponents to this scheme that it is utterly vis- 
ionary ; and that, even if possible, it would only add greatly to 
the disasters of Ireland. Thus, the hundreds of millions of 
pounds of purchase money would be taken from Ireland by the 
present owners, be they landlords or London corporations, and 
would be invested in England. Also the annual payments by 
the farmers would be transferred to the bank of England, in Lon- 
don, and would be a constant and disastrous drain upon the wealth 
of Ireland, and thus would lead to its further and more ruinous 
impoverishment. And if the peasants are unable to pay 
rent, how much more would it be impossible for them to make 
the payments on the principal purchase money which will neces- 
sarily be greater than the rent. It is further urged that in less 
than a generation the laws of thriftiness and unthriftiness will 
prevail here as elsewhere, and thus large estates will eventually be 
formed out of these smaller ones. And, on the other hand, since 
the law of primogeniture is to be abolished, as these thirty 
acre farms are divided among children, in one or two generations 
the present condition of exceedingly small farms will be repeated, 
with the necessary accompaniment of misery and starvation. 
Further, the large present class of very small fanners and the 
Large body of floating laborers, which include the chief portion 
of the destitute poor, are lacking in that knowledge of modern 
farming and in those thrifty habits which are indispensable for 

success in the management of farms of larger size. Thus the 

beautiful scheme of dividing Ireland up among a large class of 
"Peasan! Proprietors" isutopian in the extreme ; it would increase, 



FEASIBLE AND UNFEASIBLE REMEDIES FOR THE TROUBLES. 39 

instead of diminishing the present poverty and suffering ; it would 
bring only temporary not permanent relief ; and there is not the 
slightest probability that it will ever be attempted. 

Another equally visionary half-measure which has been proposed 
is to transfer the tenants of excessively small holdings, in regions 
where the soil is very poor, to other regions where the soil is rich 
and productive. Upon this and other impracticable schemes it is 
easy to do a deal of fine talking and Writing. During the weary 
years of our late war, how easy it was for brilliant Bohemians, 
sitting cosily in their sanctums, to criticise the generals in the 
field, and map out campaigns which would terminate the struggle 
in three months ! The proposition to transfer population from 
one region of Ireland to another involves the violation of all rights 
of property and of individual liberty. It might be done in an 
Asiatic despotism, but it cannot be done in Ireland, under Anglo- 
Saxon rule. 

There is one feasible means of relieving the poverty and destitu- 
tion in Ireland. In our opinion this is the sole practicable mode 
of relief. That is the emigration of the surplus population. But 
for the emigration of the past fifty years, the population of that 
island to-day would be fifteen or twenty, instead of five or six 
millions. Famine and starvation, instead of returning at intervals, 
would be the overwhelming chronic and constant condition of 
the island. Emigration is the legitimate and natural safety-valve 
for the escape of surplus population in all civilized countries. 
This is particularly the case at the present time, owing to the 
extraordinary development of means of communication during 
the last twenty, and especially the last ten years. It is easier for 
the Irish peasant to go from Cork or Dublin to Manitoba or 
Texas to-day, than it was for our pioneers to go from New York 
or Boston to Syracuse or Rochester sixty years ago. The vast 
and rich but uncultivated fields of Minnesota, Manitoba and 
Texas invite the starving or straitened, the thrifty and enter- 
prising tillers of the soil of all lands to go thither and find food, 
abundance and wealth. 

The government of the " British Dominion" in North America 
has made most liberal offers of land, and of aid in transportation, 
to the suffering and destitute people of Ireland. Indeed every 



40 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

Irish man or woman who arrives in New York, though possessed 
of no trade or skill in labor, if willing to work is sure of em- 
ployment at wages which will more than keep soul and body 
together. In a few months, or, at most, in a few years, they can 
earn enough to send for brothers and sisters to escape trom the 
land of desolation to a land of plenty. 

Every prosperous Irishman in America, Canada or Australia; 
every Irish servant girl, living in the midst of bounty in our kitch- 
ens; every immigrant from any of the over-populated countries of 
Europe, is a living argument for emigration, not as a palliative, 
but as a radical cure of the evils and miseries which inevitably 
accompany a too compact population in a given territory. 

We are not to lose sight of the fact that Ireland is essentially 
an agricultural country. No legislation as to the tenure of land 
can make it a manufacturing country like Belgium, or a commer- 
cial country like Holland. Its rural' population is, also, the most 
dense in the known world. The only escape for this excessively 
compact rural population from misery and starvation will be in 
the future, as it has been in the past, through emigration to such 
countries as America, where vast regions of most fertile virgin 
soil have for endless ages been awaiting the approach of civilized 
man. 

It is not too much to say that a people who, with their 
opportunities of escape, persist in sitting down and hugging their 
misery, in living in rags, dirty hovels and mire, more like the 
swine with whom they lodge than like human beings, thereby cut 
themselves off from the intelligent sympathy of the world. The 
only palliating circumstances are the ignorance, the stupidity and 
inherited inertia which cloud the vision, obscure the judgment 
and dull the senses of the poorest portion of the Irish peasants, 
who are, indeed, in a "primitive condition of society." 

But, for the more intelligent and somewhat well-to-do class 
of tenant farmers, while in sight and hearing of the fleets 
of steamers which every week pass from Liverpool to the south, 
and from Glasgow to the north of Ireland, on their way to Amer- 
ica, — for these larger farmers to sluggishly stay and contest with 
the difficulties of their surroundings, and then to send Mr. 
Parnell to America to secure funds to help their Land League 



FEASIBLE AND UNFEASIBLE REMEDIES FOR THE TROUBLES. 41 

agitations, is a great strain upon the patience of intelligent 
Americans: For Mr. Parnell himself and his coadjutors (or 
co-conspirators) to make political capital out of the miseries of 
the Irish farmer and laborer is for him to invite the contempt of 
every well-informed philanthropist, political economist or states- 
man. It is safe to predict that within less than a twelvemonth 
Mr. Parnell and his associates will sink into as despised or 
ludicrous oblivion as have the Fenian heroes who, a few years 
ago, held high court on Union Square and organized a Quixotic 
raid into Canada. 

It is a curious circumstance that the majority of writers and 
statesmen belonging to the conservative party in England, to- 
gether with many liberals of all shades, favor emigration as the 
only natural and feasible relief of the Irish at home. The 
conservatives may find an additional argument from the fact that 
this mode does not disturb the question of tenure of landed 
or other property in England. It is, indeed, an instructive cir- 
cumstance, and a just occasion for alarm, as to its bearing upon 
the tenure of all property, of all kinds, and in all countries, that 
Mr. Parnell goes to Paris and holds confidential communication 
with Rochefort, Victor Hugo and other pronounced Communists, 
Socialists and Nihilists. 

It will without doubt be true in the future, as it has been in the 
past, that the more enterprising of the poorer classes will emigrate 
from Ireland, leaving, the more stupid and shiftless at home, 
there to continue the most prolific propagation of the proletariat 
that is to be found in any part of the world. But no impediment 
on this account ought to be put, nor has ever been put, by the 
British Government in the way of the emigration of the thriftier 
portion of the poorer classes from Ireland, whether their desti- 
nation be England, Canada, the United States or Australia. 

In conclusion, we are not to lose sight of the fact that causes 
entirely external to Ireland are conspiring to render this island 
incapable of supporting even one-half of its present population. 
The chief of these is fhe development and rapid expansion of 
what is termed in Europe the " American" system of farming. 
The first contest of the Monitor with the Merrimac sent to the 



42 THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND. 

bottom of the ocean all the wooden vessels of war in the world. 
Mr. Dalrymple's farm in Minnesota has sounded the death-knell 
of all old-fashioned farming. Profitable farming to-day, whether 
in Minnesota, Ohio, England or Ireland, means the substitution of 
machinery for human hands, of a reaping machine drawn by 
two horses for a hundred men with sickles. The partial intro- 
duction of the machine system of farming into England has 
already cut off a part of the demand for Irish laborers in England 
during the harvest season. When modern farming is fully 
adopted in Ireland, as of necessity will soon be the case, it will 
be found that three-quarters of the present number of farm 
laborers will be put out of employment. A population of one 
million will furnish laborers sufficient to conduct all the farming 
operations. Another million, more or less, will live by manufac- 
tures and trade. The remainder will have to emigrate or starve, 
irrespective of Tenant Right, Peasant Proprietorship, Free Sale, 
Fixity of Tenure, Fair Rents, or any other condition of owner- 
ship, tenantry or labor ! 

The effects of machine farming, as practiced upon the vast 
prairies of our Western States, are already felt in every country 
in Europe. American wheat, cheese, beef and fruit are 
already disturbing the local markets, and therefore the prosperity 
of the farming population in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, 
and even Russia. The advance of civilization brings with it, 
from time to time, economic changes of vast extent. It is an 
irreparable law that the old must adapt itself to the new. The 
transition in modes of farming operations in different countries in 
Europe will be necessarily attended by financial disturbance 
and, in many cases, doubtless, by great distress. The chief 
relief will be found in emigration of the farming population to 
countries where are found vast regions of fertile and unoccupied 
land. While ease, competence and affluence await those who 
have the energy to lift themselves from the surroundings and 
attachments of home and country and go to distant lands and 
foreign climes, we may pity but cannot approve the lassitude 
and inertia of those who prefer to remain in distress and 
wretchedness, meanwhile proclaiming their misery to the ends 
of the earth. 



APPENDIX. 



MR. GLADSTONE S NEW LAND BILL. 

After the foregoing pages were put to press, Mr. Gladstone's 
Land Bill was introduced in the House of Commons and passed 
its first reading. Parliament has just adjourned for the Easter 
recess amid great excitement, and the bill has been re-committed, 
after having received twenty-one amendments in the House of 
Commons. This bill is spoken of by the English papers as by far 
the most important which the present Premier has ever framed. 
Its most important feature is the following : it proposes to estab- 
lish a system of local commissions or courts, to which shall be 
referred all questions of dispute as to rents, which may arise be- 
tween landlords and tenants. The decisions of these courts are 
to be final. 

This bill is regarded by all conservatives and many liberals as 
revolutionary ; as destructive of rights of property, according to the 
British constitution and the usages in all civilized countries and 
in all ages of the world ; and, finally, as communistic in its spirit 
and results. The Duke of Argyle has resigned his place in the 
Gladstone Cabinet, since he sympathizes with this view concern- 
ing the bill. During the recess the members of Parliament will 
have an opportunity of conferring with their constituents and 
ascertaining the general public opinion with reference to the bill. 

Meantime the telegraph brings report of great excitement ex- 
tending through southern and western Ireland, growing out of an 
attack upon a constabulary force who were attending a bailiff who 
was serving a writ of ejectment. A riotous uprising is feared 
throughout Ireland. 

It i»s also stated that thousands of young Irishmen and Irish- 
women, of good appearance and apparently of some means, are 
crowding the steamers at Dublin and Cork, in their rage to emi- 
grate to Canada and the United States. 



PRICE, 15 CENTS. 



THE LAND TROUBLES 



IN IRELAND. 



A Historical, Political and 
Kconomical Study. 



-BY- 



HPPIOF. G-. F. COMFORT, A.. 3VC., 

OF SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY. 



SYRACUSE, N. Y.: 
JOHN T. ROBERTS. 

1881. 



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COMMON SENSE IN CHURCH BUILDING. Illustrated by seven origi- 
nal plates. By E. C.Gardner, author of "Homes and How to Make Them," 
• Illustrated Homes," and "Home Interiors. 1 ' 16G pages, cloth and gilt. Price, 
$1.00. 

THE LAND TROUBLES IN IRELAND : A Historical, Critical and Eco- 
nomic Study. By George F. Comfort, A M. 42 pages, paper. Price, 15cts. 

Any of the above sent by mail on receipt of price. Postage stamps receivable for 
fractions of a dollar. 

JOHN T. ROBERTS, 

SYRACUSE, N. V. 
PfMagazlnc *ubs< riptions taken at club rates. 



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